Binsted's family keeps his memory alive

SPECIAL REPORT: The Tyler Binsted Murder
Follow the three-part series, watch videos, read bios and view an interactive map.

• Sunday: Binsted family confronts a tragic murder

• Monday: A crime that altered many lives

• Tuesday: Preserving memories of a loved one

MOUNT JACKSON It started out as their special place, a spot where a parent and child could sit and talk, sharing ideas and plans for a future filled with such promise.

It has evolved by necessity into something vastly different: a spot to preserve memories instead of plan them.

Paula Binsted and her son, Tyler, used to sit on a small staircase behind the family's Shenandoah County home and cover topics ranging from how to arrange the emerging garden in front of them to whatever problems they might be having. And, unlike many parent-child relationships, Paula was comfortable not only offering advice to her child but accepting it.

"That's just the way Tyler was. He was such a logical thinker," she said. "A lot of times I would ask him questions and just bounce things off of him because I knew he had such an amazingly logical mind."

These days, the garden in front of the steps remains a work in progress, with two notable exceptions. Perched at the garden's high point is a welded iron cross looming over a smooth, tan stone engraved with the name "Tyler."

Now the plot has become a memorial garden to Tyler Jay Binsted, shot dead at the age of 19 after being robbed in Richmond's Byrd Park on March 27, 2008.

"I've had dreams of meeting up with Tyler -- which, to me, is a blessing. It's comforting," his mother said. "But it's very hard to wake up and realize that it was just a dream. It's like a realization all over again that you've lost your son. That can throw your whole day off. It can throw your whole week off."

. . .

Paula and Tom Binsted came to Shenandoah County 20 years ago to raise a family, settling here in part because Tom, a native of the District of Columbia, wanted to be close to his mother, who had moved to this agricultural region in northwest Virginia.

Tom Binsted spent 11 months with the Marine Corps in Vietnam between 1969 and 1970, serving with several scout sniper platoons and seeing more than enough violence to last a lifetime.

His tour ended early, on a night mission spent trying to extract fellow Marines who had been ambushed earlier that day. All 11 members of that patrol had been killed or wounded, and the extraction mission didn't fare much better.

"We had a pretty rough time. I can't remember for sure how many men we lost," said Binsted, who was injured and flown out on a medevac helicopter.

After the Marines, he worked in Montana as everything from a ranch hand to a logger before he and Paula came east to raise their daughter, Kasey, and twin sons, Tyler and Seth.

They bought 5 acres, set against a backdrop of the Allegheny and Blue Ridge mountains and featuring an old farmhouse, several outbuildings and a meandering backyard creek.

The children got to grow up in a safe, rural community.

"Violent crimes are just not a usual occurrence here," county Sheriff Timothy C. Carter said. "It's a different world."

It was a world in which the Binsted children thrived. And as twins, Tyler and Seth shared an especially strong bond.

"They looked after each other," Paula Binsted recalled. "They were almost like angels."

Both were excellent students at Stonewall Jackson High School and standouts on the soccer team, which reached the Group A championship game for the first time in school history when they were seniors. Both showed artistic promise as well, with Tyler excelling on the violin and in sculpture and Seth gravitating toward photography and video production.

"Very artistic. Extremely artistic," said Karen Whetzel, their high school principal. "And they were very caring about others."

Seth said that as they approached their high school graduation in 2006, he and his brother understood that each would go his separate way.

Tyler, accepted at the Rhode Island School of Design and Virginia Commonwealth University, chose to go to Richmond and study sculpture. Seth headed to James Madison University, where he is a dean's list student majoring in media arts and design.

"I didn't expect to be affected by our separation that much, but it had a very important impact on my first year in college," Seth said. "Coming back and seeing each other over Christmas break and then the summer, I would say they were probably the best times I had with Tyler. In childhood, where we were sharing everything together, now we were sharing our separate discoveries with each other."

Tyler excelled at school as well. At the end of his first year, he was one of two students selected from the freshman class of about 500 to go to VCU's Qatar campus for a competition.

"It's quite an honor," said Amy Hauft, chairwoman of VCU's department of sculpture and extended media. "He was just super bright. You could just look in his eyes and see it. He would connect with everyone he talked to."

Hauft said Binsted wasn't necessarily sold on becoming a sculptor.

"It was just a place he was at," she said.

Binsted's parents said he had expressed interest in eventually going into furniture design.

"That was the deal we had: Tyler was going to design furniture, and we were going to build it together," his father said. "We talked about that the last three or four months before his death."

Binsted's murder left scars at VCU, but his memory endures. The school created a scholarship named after Binsted that is awarded each spring to a rising sophomore sculpture major.

Not unexpectedly, there have been changes among the Binsted family members. His parents speak of trying to be better role models. Seth is pondering graduate school and possibly law school.

And older sister Kasey has come home from school in Montana and is talking about starting a nonprofit that would work with at-risk children in Richmond. She wants to name the group Art Is A Weapon, with the goal of offering the fine arts as an outlet for youth.

Her plans are an outgrowth of her grief over her brother's murder.

"I knew that I had two options," she said. "I could figure out how to make the best out of this and use my energy in a constructive way, or I could completely self-destruct and either lay down and die or live a miserable existence that he would never have condoned.

"He's still there pushing me."

One thing that hasn't changed is the family's need to hold close their favorite memories of Tyler.

Seth clings to the images of the last time he saw his brother alive. Tyler, Seth and one of their close friends, Matt Wilder, were together on Christmas break in January 2008.

"We were in Tyler's new apartment in Richmond," his brother recalled. "The three of us were laying on Tyler's bed. We were listening to music. We weren't even having any conversation. I was leaving to go to Spain. His next semester was about to start, and Matt's next semester was about to start [at the College of William and Mary].

"It's hard for me to tell you the meaning that that point carries in my mind just because that was the last time that I saw him."

. . .

Nate Hissong was among those who spoke at a memorial service for Binsted in the Stonewall Jackson High School gym three days after the murder.

Hissong is the soccer coach at the 550-student school, and his team lost 2-1 to Clarke County in the state final during the Binsteds' senior year.

It has been nearly three years since Stonewall Jackson nearly pulled off the improbable, and one year since Binsted was killed, but Hissong still has vivid memories of that team and the twins.

"Both were crucial to the rise of the Stonewall program," he said. "Seth was a tireless defensive midfielder, and his brother was a very scrappy defender. Both played way bigger than their small size would suggest."

Both twins were all-Shenandoah District selections as seniors, and Seth was an all-Region B pick as well.

While Seth finished fourth on the team in goals and third in assists, Tyler was all about defense. He relished knowing that his teammates looked to him to defuse an opponent's attack and push the ball harmlessly to the sideline.

"Tyler would stand up to anybody," Hissong said, pausing as his voice cracked slightly. "And he was good at it -- excellent at it.

"Tyler really loved being the last line of defense."

Contact Joe Macenka at (804) 649-6804 or jmacenka@timesdispatch.com.